NASA Mars helicopter heard humming through planet's thin air
Cape Canaveral (US): First came the amazing pictures, then the video. Now NASA is sharing sounds of its little helicopter humming through the thin Martian air.
NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in California released this first-ever audio Friday, just before Ingenuity made its fifth test flight, a short one-way trip to a new airfield.
During the fourth flight a week earlier, the low hum from the helicopter blades spinning at more than 2,500 revolutions per minute is barely audible. It almost sounds like a low-pitched, faraway mosquito or other flying insect.
That's because the 4-pound (1.8-kilogram) helicopter was more than 260 feet (80 meters) from the microphone on the Perseverance rover. The rumbling wind gusts also obscured the chopper's sound.
Scientists isolated the sound of the whirring blades and magnified it, making it easier to hear.
Ingenuity the first powered aircraft to fly at another planet arrived at Mars on Feb. 18, clinging to Perseverance's belly. Its first flight was April 19; NASA named the takeoff and landing area Wright Brothers Field in honor of Wilbur and Orrville, who made the world's first airplane flights in 1903. A stamp-size piece of wing fabric from the original Wright Flyer is aboard Ingenuity.
The USD 85 million tech demo was supposed to end a few days ago, but NASA extended the mission by at least a month to get more flying time.
For Friday afternoon's 108-second test flight, the helicopter traveled southward in the same direction the rover is heading. Once over its new airfield, the chopper soared to twice its previous altitude 33 feet (10 meters) took pictures, then landed. The two airfields are 423 feet (129 meters) apart.
With the helicopter's first phase complete, the rover can now start hunting for rocks that might contain signs of past microscopic life. Core samples will be collected for eventual return to Earth.
?? New sounds from Mars: Our @NASAPersevere rover caught the beats coming from our Ingenuity #MarsHelicopter! This marks the first time a spacecraft on another planet has recorded the sounds of a separate spacecraft.
— NASA (@NASA) May 7, 2021
?? Turn the volume up: https://t.co/o7zG6mQJzx pic.twitter.com/s8Hm3dhcgg
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After Hadi, another Bangladesh student leader shot in head
Dhaka (PTI): Unidentified gunmen on Monday shot in the head Motaleb Shikder, a second leader of Bangladesh’s violent student-led 2024 uprising.
The attack took place in southwestern Khulna city, days after the killing of prominent youth leader Sharif Osman Hadi.
"The Khulna Division head of NCP (National Citizen Party) and central coordinator of the party’s workers front, Motaleb Shikder, was shot a few minutes ago," NCP’s joint principal coordinator Mahmuda Mitu said in a Facebook post.
Mitu, a doctor, said Shikder was rushed to Khulna Medical College Hospital in a critical condition.
The Kaler Kantha newspaper, quoting hospital sources, said Shikder was shot on the left side of his head, and he was bleeding profusely when he was brought to the facility, where the doctors started emergency treatment.
The attack came days after Hadi, a prominent leader of the student-led protests last year that led to the ouster of the prime minister Sheikh Hasina-led Awami League government, was shot in the head on December 12 by masked gunmen at an election campaign in central Dhaka’s Bijoynagar area.
The 32-year-old Inqilab Mancha spokesperson died while undergoing treatment in Singapore on Thursday. Hadi was a candidate for the scheduled February 12 general elections.
The interim government of Muhammad Yunus staged a nationwide mourning for Hadi’s death on Saturday and said no stone would be left unturned to track down his killers as violence erupted in Dhaka and other major cities afresh over the attack and subsequent death.
Faisal Karim Masud's parents, wife and a female friend of the prime suspect have been arrested by police, but said they were unsure about his current whereabouts.
After Monday’s clandestine attack on Shikder in Khulna city’s Majid Sarani area, police said they were yet at dark about the attack perpetrators or motive but launched an “immediate manhunt” for their arrest.
Local police station chief Animesh Mondal, however, informed reporters that Khulna Medical College Hospital (KMCH) authorities now shifted Shikder to its City Imaging Centre to pinpoint the state of his injury.
